Friday, June 01, 2007

Don't Lock Them Up Part 459 - Richard Garside

The Howard League and NACRO obviously aren't getting enough taxpayer cash for their anti-prison campaigns - it's become necessary to have more state funding. Step forward the "Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, an independent charity based at King’s College London", run by one Richard Garside. Pommygranate has done the digging.

1995/6; Campaigns officer, Campaign Against Arms Trade

1996/8; Press officer, Survival International

1998/03; Senior press officer, National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders

41 comments:

How unusual: the mother of a violently criminal suicide is interviewed on "Today" and claims that he was misguided. She reads a letter he wrote from prison in which he wrote that he'll "never do it again" if he's allowed home. Should we be surprised that a mother mourns the death of her son? Why is this crock of emotional dung served up by the BBC? What purpose does it serve beyond attempting to bolster the case for not locking up violent scum? I'm sure Rickwood would have been alive today had a community service order been applied: who else would have suffered is not something about which the BBC or Mr Garside appear to trouble themselves.

Here's another one, freshly picked this morning. According to, what else?, the BBC, a clearly mad invidual by the name of Jim Gamblesays: 'Action not jail' for paedophiles."

Jail, he believes, "should be reserved for more serious offenders... Some child sex offenders should be encouraged to seek treatment rather than be sent to prison."

"Jim Gamble, of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), said some offenders who viewed child porn could be given a police caution.

"He believes treatment in the community is a practical way of dealing with the huge scale of the problem." Well, why not, given what a raging success "care in the community" has been for other offences against society ...

There's a very unpleasant thread on this on the Beeb's HYS, with a disturbing number of men agreeing, and positing that viewing child pornography shouldn't be regarded as paedophilia. I didn't tot up the numbers, but I got the impression that by far the majority of men were excusing paedophilia,no doubt having such inclinations themselves. The women were in no doubt: castrate (which doesn't do any good), bang them up forever, or put them down. But a very disturbing number of men commenting on the thread were equivocal.

What is wrong with lethal injection? These people cannot ever be made safe for society, specifically children, and does the taxpayer really want to be burdened with keeping a pervert for 40 or 60 years? I read that chemical castration doesn't necessarily work either - although I would think it's certainly worth a try - because that person then channels his aggression not into sex, but violence.

But I was staggered by the number of men on HYS who skirted around actually excusing men who view child pornography - as though this were a harmless little diversion that didn't damage children. Of course, HYS is self-selecting and many of the men motivated to write do seem to have issues. (Not all; plenty wanted lethal injection.)

But re criminals and paedophiles, the message is, "Don't lock them up. Prison doesn't work." Sorry, but it works for me that the criminals and perverts are out of circulation at least for a while.

This is for Umbongo, JuliaM and Verity (hello again!) as you all agree so strikingly on young Rickwood's case: The child was 14 years old. Obviously fit fodder for the gallows. Quite unredeemable: criminal waste of our money even to look after him properly, bloody good job if a crook staff member DID help him out of this world: wouldn't mind a job like that myself. By God, wouldn't I just show 'em! I know CS Lewis made a joke about binding 'em over when they should be bending 'em over: flogging's too good for 'em! Snap! Crack! Choke! Through the trap, next please: country'll never be any good till we do this, and in public too! An innocent one? Never! They're all the same, and if he didn't do that, then he'd done something else, you can be sure! Funeral? toss the little buggers in the canal! tough on the fishes, ha-ha-ha! - However, CS Lewis also made satirical mention of two little cliques, the Cruels and the Clevers: I can't determine which set you'd be happier with. My late father, in the days of capital punishment - yes, I actually remember the classics, Bentley, Ruth Ellis, Hanratty _ used to work himself up into a foaming lather every Christmas when the Daily Telegraph used to print the Bill of Fare for the Christmas dinner in Pentonville or the Scrubs: "Better than what I'm getting, and I'm an honest man!" and once or twice, although possessing no qualifications for the task save enthusiasm - thus ahowing he had the same cast of mind as some of the criminals he was hoping to despatch - wrote to the Home Secretary, offering his services as Public Hangman. I suppose it's that close-up example of sheer obsessive self-righteousness that made me wary of exhibiting such behaviour, and of wanting to distance myself from it.

Now, regarding paedophilia. You all seem too "educated" (well, in at least one sense of the word) to make the same mistake made famously made a few years ago by a gang of harridans who, with threats of violence, chased a paediatrician away from an estate as they weren't sufficiently literate to understand that crucial word her name-plate.You must understand that I in no way condone such behaviour: I find it loathsome, and believing as I do, in God and the Devil, I hold the practitioners of such a dreadful vice to be in the grip of a terrible evil.But the fact remains that many notable names in the history of our culture have practised it in one or another form. The great fathers of Greek philosophy, and the better-off members of their society: any number of ancient Romans: Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Rochester, Lewis Carroll, Eric Gill: it reached epidemic proportions in Victorian London, although it is not much emphasised by nostalgic regarders of our past and faded glory.(For an example of some folk's reaction to one of Gill's religious art-works, look up this URL http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/j005htGill_Distributism_Odou.htm )You seem to enjoy your anger: but (at the risk of sounding like the late great satirist Peter Simple's Prof. Heinz Kiosk with his eternal cry of "We are all gullty"! - what did YOU do to stop this state of affairs from coming to pass?

Cut your wordy posts. Do you imagine anyone ploughs through them? To what end? To learn little lessons in life from you? Why?

I sense that you are fragile, and I'm not going to be unkind, but much of what you write is emotive rubbish.

Here is one of your more self-elevating, silly, statements: "Now, regarding paedophilia. You all seem too "educated" to make the same mistake made famously made a few years ago by a gang of harridans who, with threats of violence, chased a paediatrician away from an estate as they weren't sufficiently literate to understand that crucial word her name-plate."

I think you can assume, as you so graciously allow, that we here would not have mistaken paedeatrician for paedophile. So why so why mention it? What? Was? The? Point?

Not finished, Veritas drives his point into the ground "who famously made a few years ago by a gang of harridans who," ... Incorrect.

Why "harridans"? Do you hate women so much that your mind has blanked out the fact that the mob comprised council estate men and women? When did men become "harridans"?

OK, Verity, Make that "oafish neanderthal louts and harridans". Sorry! I'm not a male chauvinist pig, any more than you're a female chauvinist one.I may get annoyed about things, but I'd say that to be perpetually calling for death and violence - and it wouldn't take me all that long to compile a malodorous little anthology from your posts to show how many times you've announced how much you hate someone or how you'd like to hurt him - is a bit on the emotive side too! I may be wordy but I'm not cruel! My stuff contains narrative and as someone (perhaps you) said, a lot of allusions. Can't help that, I'm a bit of a reader, I have a memory and I like illustration. Most of yours, I'm sorry to say, is mood-painting. if my posts are are too long for you who's making you read them?Oh, and I like the bit about "fragile." Yes, I am a delicate little creature, intricately wrought of fine silver wire, transparent porcelain and tear-shaped flakes of mother-of-pearl all bound sweetly together with moonbeams: I move along (oh so daintily!) to the tinkling of fairy clavichords, citterns, citoles and dulcimers: I hardly dare breathe in case I disturb my delicate silken chemise, my voice is as a soft descant recorder whisperingly played in the distance, my blood is a luminously transparent ichor and I live upon sunlight and the scent of grapes. And O, kind lady, I lisp MOST fetchingly...

And before you get your righteous indignation on about this particular poor wee lamb (oh, too late, I see you already have...), let's review why he was in there in the first place, shall we?

""Arrests for burglary and aggravated vehicle taking.. On June 29 2004, he appeared before a court on a charge of "wounding with intent"

At 14! And mummy dearest was no respecter of society's rules, either:

"On Saturday August 7, Mrs Pounder smuggled two cigarettes and five matches into Hassockfield in her bra."

The subsequent punishment (ooh, so harsh!) when that was discovered seems to be regarded by the inquest as the tipping point.

No doubt you believe that he should have been treated with kid gloves, like the other do-gooders, but do you even stop to wonder if the perpetual indulgence showered on these feral little criminals (first by their families, then the school system, then the courts & social worers) isn't what is driving the crime they cause...?

Now, regarding paedophilia. You all seem too "educated" (well, in at least one sense of the word) to make the same mistake made famously made a few years ago by a gang of harridans who, with threats of violence, chased a paediatrician away from an estate as they weren't sufficiently literate to understand that crucial word her name-plate.

That is a myth, the paediatrician came home and found someone had written 'paedo' on her door. There was no mob, no violence, no 'chasing'. According to the police almost the entire local community was sympathetic to the doctor when they found out about the vandalism.

I used to know a few folks who'd been to gaol - some I'm sure you'd class as YOUR political allies - and from what I heard the food was no great shakes.

And as regards the late lamented, we're talking of the 50's and 60's, and it's really the tendency to cruel talk I was noting: frankly the old boy didn't give a damn about pensioners, even when HE could have been one - he'd not arranged things properly for himself, snobbishly refused to pay his NI and suffered for it - he and thought that ALL manual workers and anyone who dropped their h's should be treated like scum.

ANY publicised pay-rises for ANYONE set him off: he lived, wretchedly, by his pen until he died in his 80's. Perhaps I have inherited his tendency to rant.

His passion for social order and due deference made him vacillate between the worship of Hitler and Stalin - "No long haired scum with their filthy rock-and-roll and short skirts allowed to hang about THERE!"

And it's no good, juliam, your waxing sarcastic about "poor wee lambs". Show me precisely where I took that sort of line over young Rickwood.

You can't? Ah, then you must have inferred it: I suppose you imagined the tone of voice in which a liberal softy like me might actually have vocally UTTERED my short sentence, "The child was 14 years old".

I get the uncomfortable feeling that what I should have said, to fit in with the general atmosphere here, was "The adolescent, although only 14, was instinct with a sly feral ferocity and lawlessness, a sheer hateful subhuman wickedness, an in-built resistance, nay, such a sheer impermeability to all possibility of reformation and change, as make all right-thinking folk rejoice, in the name of Lombrosan determinism and Social Darwinism, that such a blind mouth has been removed from us, and we no longer have to fritter away our hard-earned cash in keeping such vermin in luxury".

Actually the phrase "Puir wee lamb" ( yes, sic, this sentimental kaleyard Scotticism!) was recently used in the context of comment on the disappearance of Charlene Downes, and by Verity, your spiritual ally, in the UK Commentators thread dealing with that unfortunate: "And al was conscience and tendre herte."- well in that context, at least.And Charlene was a 14-year old prostitute - same age as Rickwood, same awful upbringing. She's a victim, he's a hateful little cur.

Harrumph. But then I'm anti-women, aren't I, Verity, so I WOULD point that out, wouldn't I?

Some seriously argued theory of punishment, its aims, methods and possible results, would be MOST welcome: otherwise I shall have to infer (and mind, I'm NOT saying that I DO so infer) that you feel punishment's good because it makes YOU feel better or safer.

How many of the anti-Rickwood brigade here have children of up to the age of, say, 18? Any problems with 'em? Do we let 'em have a fag, or a drink? No? Oh dear, are we, after all, a bit like MODERN PARENTS in the VIZ comic?

Anp perhaps Rickwood's motorbike wasn't a 500 cc. job, a 14 year old couldn't hold one of those up. Perhaps just a little 25cc toy - anyone checked?

Jesus Christ. Why is this country full of absolute f*cking reckless idiots? Who buys a motorbike for their ELEVEN year old child?

Well scumbags like my next door neighbours for one. Oh and did I mention they live on charity? I mean housing benefit and income support, supplemented with work on the side.

As for poor Adam I can hear the world's tiniest violin playing. As far as I see it it's one less oxygen thieving scrounger I will have to support. Doubtless Ma has several more of them at home to comfort her in her old age. When are we going to wake up and realise people like this are a luxury we can no longer afford?

"Show me precisely where I took that sort of line over young Rickwood."

Hmm, probably the bit that began your diatribe: "The child was 14 years old. Obviously fit fodder for the gallows...." As you've realised yourself.

"You can't?"

Nope, guess I can ;) Unless of course, you meant it & it wasn't sarcasm? It might have got lost on the audience after you started in with your lengthy father issues...

"I shall have to infer...that you feel punishment's good because it makes YOU feel better or safer."

Some proper punishment of these young thugs would make us ALL feel safer, I suspect.

It's only a pity that the magistrates that let them off, the social workers that coddle them, the journalists that write tear-stained pieces like the 'Telegraph' article Laban referenced, don't have to suffer the depredations of the little darlings, do they...?

Oh, Juliam, one of my examples, Eric Gill, isn't from the distant past. How he managed to keep it from his friends like GK Chesterton I can't imagine. Although I never knew the man, my father did: and I can remember Eric's brother, scholarly Evan coming to the house. I think he was OK.I don't justify paedophilia or condone it in ANY way: I just ask you to recognise that paedophilia might turn out to be an important though as-yet unacknowledged strand in our cultural history, and that if you start unpicking it you might find it as the inspiration behind MANY English classics which should then be censored, rather as the anti-Gillites have demanded, with the Westminster Cathedral sculptures - "all that bare flesh!"Perhaps we should punish adultery and fornication too? As poor deluded Ezra Pound sadly remarked late in life. "It all coheres..."

Dear Juliam, just missed you!The bit about the Rickwood's motorbike DOESN'T, I think, refer to any crime of his. It's what his mother gave him, however misguidedly, as a present. And an 11-year old (sorry, got it wrong, but you didn't notice) would be less likely to be able to support a big bike ...Well, elsewhere on this site GW referred to "safety-valve" writing and I guess this must be an example of the same ...

"I don't justify paedophilia or condone it in ANY way: I just ask you to recognise that paedophilia might turn out to be an important though as-yet unacknowledged strand in our cultural history"

Like a lot of things in our past that we now look upon with horror, you mean. Slavery, subjugation of women, burning of heretics? Morals and values move on, it's a good thing to move with them...

"The bit about the Rickwood's motorbike DOESN'T, I think, refer to any crime of his."

Actually, it does. The quote from the article states: "Adam's first brush with the law came soon after his 11th birthday when he was caught riding a motorbike - a present from his mother."

Doesn't seem he was using it sensibly or legally. It's a pretty good indication of the type of family, too. I believe 'anon' at 9.32am expressed it best, for which you took him to task oh-so-predictably...

"Any kids yet?"

Lol! The 'chickenhawk' argument again: 'If you don't have kids, you can't comment on any subject related to kids..' Very original, I must say.

Veritas says that if I don't like his long, meandering posts, I shouldn't read them.

I don't.

I read everyone else's contributions, and skim through yours. You're a pedant and a bore and imagine yourself impressive and interesting and you're welcome to your delusions, but from the comments on this thread, you are in a crowd of one.

Try staying on topic. We don't care about your family and your circumstances. We don't care about your reading. When posting on current events on a public (although privately-owned) forum, it is immediacy, not long-winded autobiographical detail and reading lists, that counts.

Re your continual sneering, as someone who lives in one the highest crime countries with the worst public order in the Western world, at Mexico is pathetic. I never talk about Mexico because it's not interesting to people who don't live here or holiday here, but I will answer your vitriol-loaded, prejudiced question: Is mugging by taxi drivers in Mexico a problem?

No. I am pro-civil order and would not be living in a country that didn't have it. That's why I left Britain.

Hi Juliam , no, I WASN'T saying that your childless state precluded you from commenting on the treatment of children - I hoped you might have some (I do) so that we could discuss the problems of bringing them up decently in a disorderly society and in a culture of violence!

So what WAS the motorbike crime - and of course, the police were apparently RIGHT there, and wrong in everything else.

Aa you DON'T seem to like the way that morals and values HAVE "moved on -

Point 1) Only dead fish swim with the stream. Point 2) Our values need not be determined by a majority vote, otherwise YOU should be moving ever-closer to that soft headed liberal tolerance you so much decry! But perhaps everyone on this thread is only there to sing the same chorus in unison, for support. Learn part-singing!

And Verity, I had NO idea you'd moved to Mexico until you told us, although I DID find you "did you know?" bit about Mayan calendars and colonial cities dating back to 1500 fascinating, although the latter was perhaps misleading - did you mean 1600? Mexico is fascinating, its complicated Masonic history provides endless scope for research!You seem amazingly angry at me for someone who doesn't read me!

Also I think you've answered the children question.

Silly of you to think that the crime rate here should regulate my comments: like you, I loathe it, but I'm not rich enough to escape it.

There are some verses about folks who leave their native land on the Charlene Downes thread. but as you said, leaving us is DOING SOMETHING -

You should integrate into Mexicanlife, and stop nagging about your dullardkin back home in Blighty!

Somehow the amazingly incoherent, self-contradictory and evasive approach to defining problems and the poor standard of "thought" shown here shown here has rather disillusioned me about blogging.

"So what WAS the motorbike crime - and of course, the police were apparently RIGHT there, and wrong in everything else. "

Ah, I see - poor wee lamb was picked on by the nasty authoritarians, was he?

"Point 1) Only dead fish swim with the stream."

We aren't fish, we are human. I expect a much higher standard, therefore...

"Point 2) Our values need not be determined by a majority vote, otherwise YOU should be moving ever-closer to that soft headed liberal tolerance you so much decry!"

You may find that the 'soft headed liberal tolerance' you are so much in favour of is mostly to be found among the chattering classes and institutions dealing with criminals as victims. Not so much of it where real people live & work....

Umbongo writes: "Why is this crock of emotional dung served up by the BBC? What purpose does it serve beyond attempting to bolster the case for not locking up violent scum?"

But that is the whole point. The destabilisation of society in which the BBC is such an obsessive warrior. Everything is the fault of "society" which the Beeb and its cohorts are slyly and viciusly seeking to change without the permission of the owners of the country. It baffles me how they square their championship of parasitic malcontents with their own lavish salaries and pensions, although I realise the paradox of the conscience of champagne socialists is not a new one.

Veritas is trying to get the last authoritative word on a situation he doesn't understand. This time posing as Anonymous, Queen of Wikipedia, and writing urgent messages to himself. "For starters!"

How exciting!

How much do you know about the N American continent, Veritas? Have your visits to N America been limited to enraged searches on Wikipedia, or have you ever visited any of the three vast countries on that vast continent? (The whole of Great Britain would fit into the state of Texas 3 1/2 times - just a clue. Then there are 49 other states,including Alaska, which is around 30 miles from Russia. And then there is Canada, which stretches from the US border all the way to the Northwest Territories and the Yukon and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And then there is Mexico, which streches across deserts, jungles and mountain ranges from the Atlantic to the Pacific and all the way down to Central America.)

Around 450m people, all told, and three democratically elected national governments. We are talking unbelievably huge terrain and numbers of people and cooperation between governments.

And you think you come across as having informed comments because you paid a feverish visit to Wikipedia?

I have only just looked at the Telegraph story. I am amazed that there are no responses to it at all.I read a two page Guardian feature on the case. Even with both of them I suspect you still don't get the full story.

umbongo my son adam rickwood, had only been "accused" of wounding a 19 year old man,adam was not "CONVICTED"have you never heard the saying INNOCENT UNTILL PROVEN GUILTY??????????? and for information for you and other,idiots like yourself. the man whom my son was accused of wounding came to my home,on several occasions and told me he had been to the "police station" several times,to retract his statement "allegation"about adam. as he new it was not adam who had wounded him.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the police officer who had took the original statement from this man,was on holiday so the man asked to speak to another officer about the matter,and was told he would have to wait and speak to the officer whom had took the first statement of the accusation reguarding the assault.so while he was waiting for this police officer to get back from holiday,my son was left in "PRISON"accused of a crime he denied immediatly and then when the man whom had been assaulted,went to tell the police it was "NOT ADAM"what had assaulted him "ADAM" should of been released immediatly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NOhe was left in jail.for NOT COMMITING A CRIME.SO WHERE IS JUSTICE ?????????????????MY ADVICE IS GET THE WHOLE FACTS BEFORE YOU OR ANYBODY SLAG ANY (INNOCENT)CHILD OFF .ADAM HAD A RIGHT TO LIFE AS MUCH AS YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!OR ANY OTHER PERSON.WHAT FORGETS TO GET MENTIONED IS THE TRUE FACTS.AND THIS IS "FACT"AS THIS WAS EVIDENCE AT MY LITTLE BOYS INQUEST.

juliam get youre fucking facts right and if yuop are so sad in tne head to comment on my son whom you know nothing about then what a pathetic sad life yuo must live.you can come to me and I CAN TELL YOU ABOUT MY CHILD,AS HIS LIFE WAS STOLEN FROM HIM,I CAN TELL YOU THE WHOLE TRUTH.JUST A QUESTION FOR YOU.HAVE YOU NEVER EVER DONE ANYTHING AT ALL WRONG???????????????